Briefcase – May 2018

CLOSING

Sun Rose Café, 379 Main St. in Longmont, closed after nine years. Owners Steve and Susan Carlson own the building but are under contract to sell it to an as yet unnamed entity.

CONTRACTS

The city of Fort Collins selected longstanding local company CGRS Inc. to support general environmental-service needs for the next five years. The contract expands on previous projects CGRS had with the city in which CGRS performed petroleum-related fueling compliance and environmental services. , including hydraulic or transformer oil release and assistance with removing orphan tanks. The city also selected Boulder-based Elevations Credit Union to tailor programs to further the financial well-being of city employees. Elevations will provide financial education and training, such as onsite seminars at the city’s headquarters. Programs will address online financial education and special events for city employees covering financial topics. No compensation is involved with the credit union’s affiliation with the city.

Public Service Credit Union secured the naming rights for Colorado State University’s one-year-old on-campus football stadium for $37.7 million. The agreement, when added to the $20 million given in 2016 to name the playing surface Sonny Lubick Field, brings the total naming rights revenue for the stadium to $57 million. The agreement with the credit union is for 15 years and includes annual escalator clauses for inflation, as well as a signing bonus.

Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is collaborating with Honeywell to develop and produce Optical Communication DataLinks enabling satellite operators to deliver global connectivity to users. Ball and Honeywell will establish volume production of optical terminals for high-speed communications from ground to space, between spacecraft and from spacecraft to aircraft. Ball also completed the handover of NOAA’s advanced polar-orbiting weather satellite, the Joint Polar Satellite System, to NASA following a successful review.

Meyer Natural Foods LLC, a supplier of all-natural and organic beef, is partnering with fitness and wellness proponent Jen Widerstrom to help promote the Loveland-based company’s flagship brand, Laura’s Lean. Widerstrom, best-known for her role as a trainer on the NBC series, “The Biggest Loser,” will serve as a brand ambassador and attend events with the Laura’s Lean team and will help create recipes featuring Laura’s Lean products.

Hygge Power, a Boulder-based home-energy storage-device company, was accepted into an international energy startup accelerator. Hygge will participate in Free Electrons as one of the five U.S. companies in the 30-company program. The program began April 3 and takes place in Lisbon, Portugal. Companies compete for $200,000.

Safe Harbor Private Banking, the Denver-based banking program for the cannabis industry, is partnering with PayQwick, a provider of seed-to-sale electronic payments for the cannabis industry, to bring electronic B2B payments to Colorado.

Be My Guest Boulder, a company that works with owners of vacation-rental properties and with guests at those properties, signed an agreement with Evolve, a marketing and booking platform for vacation rentals.

EARNINGS

Woodward Inc. (Nasdaq: WWD), a designer and manufacturer of components for the aerospace and industrial markets, reported second-quarter net sales of $584.3 million, a 9.6 percent increase compared with the same period a year ago. The Fort Collins-based company attributes the increase to strong sales in its aerospace segment, which was up 17 percent year-over-year to $386.3 million.  The company’s second quarter adjusted earnings were 82 cents per share, or $52 million. Adjustments account for issues such as restructuring and moving costs associated with closing its Duarte, Calif., plant and relocating to Fort Collins, along with other expenses. The company’s actual net earnings were $38 million, or 60 cents per share.

KUDOS

Architect Jerry Gloss, a senior partner of KGA Studio Architects in Louisville, was inducted into the National Association of Home Builders’ Best in American Living Awards Hall of Fame. The awards program honors housing industry leaders who have influenced residential design and the residential building industry.

Four hospitals in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado have received a grade of A for patient safety from The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.,-based organization aiming to improve health-care quality and safety in hospitals. Longmont United Hospital in Longmont, affiliated with Centura Health; UCHealth’s Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, and Banner Health’s McKee Medical Center in Loveland and North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley received As. Hospitals in the region that received a grade of B were UCHealth’s Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Boulder Community Foothills Hospital in Boulder, Platte Valley Medical Center in Brighton and SCL’s Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette. Centura Health’s Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville received a C.

InterMountain Record Center Inc., of Casper, Wyo., All Phase Restoration of Windsor and Group Publishing Inc. of Loveland were recognized for ethical behavior at the Better Business Bureau Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming Torch Awards for Ethics ceremony. The Larimer Humane Society accepted the award in the nonprofit category. Also recognized were the first BBB Spark Award for Entrepreneurship winners: All About Insurance of Loveland, American Electrical Innovations Ltd. of Wellington and everHuman of Fort Collins.

The Women’s Fund of Weld County recognized outgoing board member Julie Constance for her commitment to improving the lives of women and girls in Weld County. Constance, a sales executive with BizWest, served on the board of the Women’s Fund for six years and received the organization’s Champion for Women award April 14.

The Group Inc. Real Estate, a residential real estate brokerage based in Fort Collins, is ranked 113th among brokerages in the United States based on sales volume, according to an industry performance survey conducted by RISMedia. In 2017, The Group recorded $1.878 billion in transaction volume, or 46 percent of all dollar volume in Northern Colorado. It also recorded 4,740 transaction sides.

Sejoyia Foods was recognized with a “Nexty” award for “Best New Sweet Snack” at the 2018 Natural Product Expo West. Louisville-based Sejoyia joined Fresca Foods in 2015. Prior to that, the company was branded as Wonderfully Raw and founded by Sequoia Cheney.

Companies from Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland were among the winners of the 2018 Colorado Manufacturing Awards, which named companies across 10 industry categories for excellence in manufacturing. Manes Machine from Fort Collins was recognized as an Outstanding Contract Manufacturer. Left Hand Brewing in Longmont was recognized as an Outstanding Brewer. Loveland-based Lightning Systems was named Outstanding Energy/ Environment Manufacturer. The awards are presented by CompanyWeek and Manufacturer’s Edge. Winners were selected from 30 finalists, which included companies from Boulder, Louisville and Broomfield. Finalists were selected because of business success, manufacturing acumen and commitment to Colorado’s manufacturing industry.

The Boulder Small Business Development Center won the 2018 SBDC Excellence and Innovation Award, making it​ one of​ the top center​s​ in the United States. The award was presented in Washington by the U.S. Small Business Administration during National Small Business Week at the end of April.

Doubletree by Hilton in Greeley won a Colorado Congress for Urbanism Award for Johnson Nathan Strohe, a Denver-based building design firm. Because of the hotel’s positive impact on the surrounding area, the firm and project were awarded Best Built Project Urban Impact.

Good Day Pharmacy earned the National Community Pharmacists Association’s Innovation Center Excellence, or NICE, Award for Best Customer Convenience Improvement. It was the first year for the competition, made to acknowledge pharmacies for their efforts to better serve their community. Loveland-based Good Day Pharmacy was recognized for a program it started in 2014 to assist women one-on-one with breast prosthesis fitting.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Fort Collins-based Woodward Inc. (Nasdaq: WWD) is acquiring L’Orange GmbH from Rolls Royce for $859 million. L’Orange is a global leading supplier of fuel injection systems for industrial diesel, heavy fuel oil and dual-fuel engines. Woodward will acquire it and its assets in Germany, China and the United States.

Conga, the Broomfield-based company that specializes in intelligent document automation, made its second acquisition in a week and third in a month. The latest acquisition is Counselytics, a provider of contract discovery and analytics AI solutions. On March 27, Conga acquired Orchestrate LLC, a financial services software company, and on March 7, it acquired Octiv, a company that provides web-based document solutions.

Bill Barrett Corp. (NYSE: BBG) completed its $649 million merger with Fifth Creek Energy Co. LLC and is renaming to HighPoint Resources Corp. The company will be traded on the New York Stock Exchange with a new ticker symbol, HPR. The deal was finalized in March. HighPoint Resources is based in Denver and focuses on the development of oil and natural gas assets in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Colorado.

MOVES

Organizers of the NoCo Hemp Expo announced that next year it will relocate from The Ranch Events Center in Loveland to Denver after it sold out at this year’s event. Over April 6-7, the fifth annual expo had 6,000 attendees, about 1,300 more than it had last year, and 150 exhibitors.

Rush Bowls, a fast-casual restaurant chain known for its meals-in-a-bowl crafted from fruits and vegetables, topped with granola and honey, and blended with protein, vitamins and other ingredients, signed a lease for a new corporate headquarters in Gunbarrel, northeast of Boulder. The new headquarters is set to open in May and includes more than 4,000 square feet. It will be at 5400 Spine Road and will house the corporate offices, a new eatery and a test kitchen.

NAME CHANGES

One of the last vestiges of WhiteWave Foods Co. was removed, as DanoneWave dropped the “Wave” portion of its name, becoming simply Danone North America. The company announced the change one year after French dairy company Danone completed its $12.5 billion acquisition of WhiteWave, a home-grown Boulder Valley company that produces iconic brands such as Silk products and Horizon Organic milk.

Nutrien Ltd. is launching a newly branded retail business, Nutrien Ag Solutions. The name change for the retail business, effective July 1, will apply to all offices and operating facilities in North and South America that hold the names Crop Production Services, Agroservicios Pampeanos and Utilfertil. Nutrien is the newly formed merged company of Agrium, which had worldwide operations including in Loveland, Greeley and Denver, and Potash Corp.

OPENING

Zayo Group Holdings Inc. (NYSE: ZAYO) plans to build a 30,000-square-foot data center in Feltham, United Kingdom, in the London metropolitan area. The zColo facility will provide 3.6 megawatts of critical power. Boulder-based Zayo provides fiber and bandwidth connectivity, colocation and cloud infrastructure services to companies worldwide.

Louisville-based Office Evolution opened a coworking space in Longmont, the company’s 13th location in Colorado. The 6,500-square-foot center at 1979 S. Hover St., Suite 200, will offer coworking space, private offices and business services with 24/7 access.

Amsterdam-based Here Technologies, a provider of mapping for autonomous vehicles, opened a research and development facility at 4900 Pearl East Circle in Boulder. The location has about 20 employees with plans to grow to about 35 in the next year. It will focus on geospatial engineering and crowdsourcing data from car sensors to be used for high-definition mapping.

After 49 years in Boulder, Pedestrian Shops is making its first expansion to Denver. The new location will be at 2368 15th St., in the growing Central Platte Valley neighborhood. The store has two Boulder locations: one downtown on the Pearl Street Mall and one in the Village Shopping Center near McGuckin Hardware.

Camp Bow Wow, a dog day-care and overnight boarding franchise, is opening a new location in Longmont. The property, at 801 S. Sherman St., will house a 6,000 square-foot indoor facility. It will include four indoor and outdoor play yards, 88 cabins with cots for the dogs, a swimming pool, outdoor play equipment and a climate-controlled interior. It plans to open this spring and have a grand-opening event this summer. Camp Bow Wow was founded by 2018 Boulder County Business Hall of Fame recipient Heidi Ganahl in Broomfield in 2000, and has since become a $100 million juggernaut in the doggy day-care space.

Dick’s Sporting Goods will open at Foothills mall in Fort Collins on Aug. 1, while Loft will open in late summer and other stores are soon to come. Encore, a shoe store, opened in April, and Forever 21 has plans to open a 16,000-square-foot store at the front of the mall. Francesca’s, a women’s clothing store, and la Madeleine French Bakery are slated to open in the next few months. The food court is also on track to open this summer.

PRODUCT UPDATE

Cryptanite Blockchain Technologies Corp. (CSE: NITE), a Boulder-based blockchain technologies company and recent graduate of the Boomtown accelerator, beta-tested its ChargaCard payment app. ChargaCard’s software system allows recurring billing, business-to-consumer financing and risk-management services as a way to bypass third-party financial institutions and credit cards. Installment payments from consumer to business can be automated. Service providers can use it to provide lines of credit to clients, flexible payment plans and zero percent interest rates. ChargaCard can also help businesses recover past-due invoices.

The private beta test ran through May 1.

A tech startup in Longmont emerged from stealth mode to announce its first product, a plug-and-play system that it says “drastically improves retail-loss prevention and slashes operational costs.” DeepCam LLC, had been in stealth mode for three years and made the product announcement at the International Security Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas. The system uses biometrics to identify shoplifting and other suspicious behaviors. It has been successful in trials conducted with retailers in the United States and internationally.

Boulder company minuteKEY, which produces self-service key-cutting kiosks, received U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approval of its technology patent. The patent, titled “Self-service Key Duplicating Machine with Automatic Key Model Identification System,” is the 15th patent the company has secured. The patent covers a method of duplicating a key including storing key blanks in a machine, receiving a master key, automatically detecting the cross-sectional profile of the master key, automatically selecting the appropriate blank key based on the profile match and automatically cutting the blank key to duplicate a key tooth pattern of the master key.

Clip Interactive, a Boulder-based tech company that syncs digital media and marketing with radio broadcasts, is launching several new products. Clip uses its technology to sync ads played on radio airwaves with digital media, pushing them to Twitter, Facebook and other sites listeners could be perusing while listening to the radio spot. Now, Clip Interactive is looking to roll out new products to market in the near future. One of those products, currently called Magic, is commercial free local radio — a way for local radio stations to compete against subscription-based services such as Sirius XM. People who prefer to hear their local radio, rather than satellite radio, can subscribe to Magic and get their local stations commercial-free. Clip plans to first launch Magic in Los Angeles as a test market later this year before eventually expanding. The company is also working on a streaming service to compete with Pandora that would play music online with unlimited skipping of songs. The company is looking to launch it at a low subscription price, such as $2 a month. Clip also is working on a back-end database of mobile device identification numbers linked to known listeners of radio stations.

InVitiria, a Fort Collins-based division of Ventria Bioscience, launched OptiVERO, a blood- and plant hydrosylate-free cell culture media for vaccine manufacturing.

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